Our colleague recently referred to September as a mini new year which we tend to agree with. It is a suitable time to reflect and think about what you want to achieve over the coming months. Refocus our health after an unhealthy and stressful summer and let’s face it, the darker cooler nights and going back to work can leaving you feeling a bit flat. So, refocus, get organised and see our top tips for an easier transition back into your work or studies.
- Re-establish your morning and evening routine – Prepare yourself mentally, there are no more open-ended evenings and lie ins, whatever you did during your time off was probably quite different to your normal routine, so start to rein back in the bedtimes and set an alarm to get up nearer your normal time so its not such a shock to your system on your first day back.
- Exercise – Staying Health and exercising will give you the energy you need to get back into it. It may be tough after the break but re-establishing or kick starting your fitness routine will pay dividends not to mention the mental benefits it brings.
- Set a deadline date to refocus – It could be when the children go back to school. It could be after your holidays. Going back into work early on your first day to get on top of things before your colleagues start the day can give you an easier and quieter transition to the day, allowing time to catch up properly with your team when they get in.
- Create a weekly meal plan – Once you start work it can be tricky to focus on other things so before you go back take 30 minutes to plan your meals for the week, not only will it save you stressing about what you are having to eat, it will also save you money shopping for that ad hoc food when you’re hungry and save you wasting food you don’t eat. You could even go one extra and batch cook food at the weekend for the week ahead but that might be a step too far!
- Make a ‘to do’ list – we are big fans of to do lists, if you fail to plan you plan to fail and there is nothing more satisfying than crossing tasks off your to do list and let’s face it, it can be a bit overwhelming when you return to work.
- Emails – Hopefully you’ll have had a relaxing break and not looked at your emails, if you’ve had an out of office on and kept copies of each email (think about whether you do need to do this in future though) it may be worth checking that the emails are still relevant and your colleagues haven’t dealt with those in your absence, so check with them first before doubling up on tasks. Delete spam & useless emails first – unsubscribe from all those sites that you do not need and run a search to send them to junk, so much time can be wasted on junk, shopping teasers (just because you bought something once) and general phishing emails it can be hard to see what is important.
- Use a Planner – Plan out your next few months, be it kids after school activities, potential holidays, weekends away, dinners out, date night etc. Plan some things you can look forward to and knowing that you have those things always makes those hump days easier to get over.
- Book another holiday – Some people will probably raise their eyebrows at this! Haven’t you just come back? Well yes but knowing that you have something to look forward to makes everything else worthwhile. After all it’s why we do what we do sometimes isn’t it? And half the fun is the research of where you can go next! Plus, if you get in quickly, you will be able to get the annual leave you want rather than working around colleagues. Another holiday in the diary will make coming back to work that bit easier.
- Is there a law that says we need to return to work on a Monday after our annual leave? We thought not! So why do most of us do that? You could be smarter with the day you return to work. Going back to work on a Monday after a holiday seems like a very long slog. Why not go back on a Thursday or even a Friday. You can get your eye back in and yeh it is the weekend again. Knowing what you are going back to is a much easier return to work in our opinion.
If you are rebooting your search for work, see our website for our UpToDate vacancies or contact us with any changes in your circumstances or job/salary requirements.
